Anathema announce new album ‘The Optimist’

The upcoming album, titled The Optimist, comes three years after 2014’s Distant Satellites and is scheduled to be released in June this year! The album was recorded in the winter of 2016 at Attica Audio in Donegal, Ireland and then finished at Castle Of Doom Studios in Glasgow with producer Tony Doogan. Speaking about the upcoming album, Daniel Cavanagh says, “I suppose you might say the album is semi-autobiographical because this time we used a surrogate. We put sound, feelings and crucially, our own hopes and fears into another person and made him the subject of the songs then weaving my own internal monologue into the narrative of The Optimist. It was John’s idea to write a narrative, so I took A Fine Day To Exit as the starting point”

“The guy who disappeared – you never knew what happened to him, did he start a new life? Did he succumb to his fate? It was never explained. The opening track title is the exact coordinates for Silver Strand beach in San Diego – the last known location of The Optimist – shown on the cover of A Fine Day to Exit” explains Vincent Cavanagh. Alongside the announcement of the new album, the band has also revealed the track list and artwork for the upcoming album. Both of which are available to view below: